


CODA to The Rise Of Skywalker

by SenselessWorks



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Fix-It of Sorts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:28:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24231346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenselessWorks/pseuds/SenselessWorks
Summary: What should have been the post credits of TROS
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo
Comments: 6
Kudos: 42





	CODA to The Rise Of Skywalker

Rey has buried the sabers of Luke and Leia, and she thinks she would like to bury poor Ben's along with them if she knew where to find it.

_Stop thinking about him Rey._

When she felt the ghosts of Luke and Leia, watching over her, and she had declared herself a _Skywalker_ as they nodded approval... she had half hoped to see Ben too.

Not that she _wanted_ him to be dead. But he disappeared right in front of her, tearing her soul apart at the same time, and he is gone from her now. No bond anymore. Never to feel him again across a sky of endless stars. Rey is forever alone. Not even his ghost to console her.

She stares out at the setting twin suns of Tatooine, traitorous tears pricking her eyes but refusing to shed them.

 _It's been six months_ , she realises.

Poe and Finn will be expecting her back soon, there's work for her to do as they chase down the last remnants of the First and Final Orders. The Sith might all be gone, but evil and a lust for power is not purely a Sith trait.

And despite what the ghost of Luke told her, that finishing her saber would complete her skills as a Jedi, Rey doesn't feel like one. She's gone from feeling this need to serve justice, follow the will of the force and to protect those who couldn't protect themselves, to.... kind of indifferent.

Sometimes she feels a tiny spark of hope, that the part of his life force he gave her to bring her back from death still lives in her, and maybe it will bring his spirit to her. A ghost perhaps, but one she can tell everything she needed to tell him before he died. It's not enough, not really, but it would better than this.

This half life she has been living can't go on much longer.

Having something to do has been, well not helpful but a distraction.... chasing down criminals, blowing up First Order installations. But she's been reckless, and Poe noticed. He's scrubbed her from any missions until she "sorts herself out", but he expects her to be ready for active duty when she comes back from Tatooine. Rose told her she has given more than enough, that Rey doesn't owe them anything more, and if she doesn't want to come back she'll explain it to the others.

Rose has been more understanding than Poe or Finn. She understands the complexity of love, of embracing it rather than hating. Although Rey told everyone Ben had returned to the light, that he saved her and the resistance by coming to Exegol, Rose is the only one who knows the whole story. Not about Palpatine - she'll never tell anyone her heritage - but everyone else thinks Ben died when Palpatine threw him into the chasm. Rose knows Ben climbed out, but rather than saving himself he gave his life force to save Rey. 

Rose has such a kind heart. It was Rose who cried with her when Rey broke down in her grief. Rey has told her some of the terrible things that happened to Ben to make him the way he was. How he was a victim of Palpatine before he was even born, and Rose cried at Ben’s suffering too.

"It's okay to love him Rey," Rose had told her. "Even after all the things he did."

The suns sink fairly quickly on Tatooine, but sunset still lasts almost an hour. Rey realises that she's been lost in her thoughts and memories when BB-8 nudges her leg and gives her an enquiring beep.

"Your right BB-8, time to think about heading home."

 _Home_. Rey's not sure what that is to her. Her AT-AT was a shelter, and she supposes it was a home... of sorts? But she'd never felt safe there, _at home_ , so...

The Resistance came close, in that it was a place with people she cared about and who cared about her... her friends and her adopted family. That sounds like home, doesn't it? But even then, something was always missing, and it's worse now. Her bond to Ben, their connections through it... it's the closest she ever felt to _home_.

As Rey leads the little droid over to ramp of the Falcon, she realises how tired she is. Far too tired to pilot a ship tonight. So she gathers some clean clothes - a loose shirt and some soft short pants for sleeping.

"We'll leave when the suns come up," she calls to BB-8, as she head off to the 'fresher.

She hasn't slept right since Exegol. The first week, she slept like the dead woman she had almost become. Heavy, dreamless, she must have been exhausted still.

But then it changed. Nightmares of being on her knees before Palpatine, Ben at her side, both of them in agony as the energy of their bond was sucked from them. Or the moment she kissed him, and instead of telling him everything she felt him, he died with so much unsaid. She wishes she had told him - for someone who was somehow so intimately familiar they were both in many ways still strangers to each other.

Sometimes she dreams about the path he took to become Kylo Ren. All that he suffered, the torture and manipulation that he fought against for so long. But then his own uncle had held a saber over him as he slept, and that had been the tipping point. Everything her friends said about him was wrong. Kylo Ren was a victim, Ben Solo was the man who broke through that conditioning. But once he came back to the light, he died. How is the Force taking him from her redemption? Kriff redemption, where was Ben's justice for the wrong done to _him_?

The worst dreams are when they are happy. Walking together by a lake with a huge field of long grasses and wildflowers as the backdrop. Kissing him, hot heavy kisses. Lying naked together on a huge bed. Ben, his body over hers, worshipping her, loving her, as he became the first and only man to enter her body.... waking from _that_ dream, her chest heaving and a scream of loss on her lips. Rey knows she will never let anyone touch her that way. It was meant for Ben.

Rey thinks she should have taken his hand in Snoke's throne room. She told herself when he asked, no he had _begged_ her, that he wasn't ready. Second guessing herself, she lied to herself and said he needed to choose the light himself. So she _abandoned_ him. He was so broken, on a path he had fought for so long before he fell, and he had embraced it because he though he had no other choice. One of the things that had left him so open to the manipulation was his sense of abandonment by his parents, and then she did the same thing. If she had stayed with him when he asked.... Rey isn't sure if he'd have turned or she would have, but she knows that last year after Crait he was unstable. Mad. And _she_ did that to him; in her dreams that's _her_ fault. It doesn't matter that in the cold, logical light of day she sees it differently, clinically. 

Dreams are about emotions, and deeper truths. Sometimes the Force shows her things in dreams. So Rey is haunted by the thought that the Force held her to account for the choices she made in the throne room, but has punished Ben instead.

Or maybe it meant to punish her, when she died from the mental and physical exhaustion on Exegol, but Ben saved her. He died the death that was meant for her.

Regardless, most nights Rey wakes up screaming, _his_ name on her lips.

So Rey doesn't like to sleep much anymore.

But tonight, as she walks tiredly back to the small kitchenette at the back of the Falcon carrying her empty caf cup, she doesn't think much of the stumble. Of course her balance is off, she's tired.

Then there's pain.. sudden pain in her left hip, her back, right ankle, and her chest as if she's been hit with something. Hard. She can't breath, can't stand on two feet, her legs won't work, won't hold her up. 

_This is what comes of not taking proper care of yourself,_ Rey thinks as she crumples to the floor, eyelids fluttering. 

As she slips toward unconsciousness she marvels at her own imagination, because she thinks that she sees Ben, hand reaching out to her, as if he is welcoming her to his side in the afterlife. And when their fingers touch it feels so real. She wraps her fingers around his, and they are holding hands.

So when she comes to, BB-8 bumping against her shoulder in concern, Rey is understandably confused. Her face is wet with tears, and she wonders how someone can still cry after they have fainted.

"It's okay BB-8, I think I'm just over tired."

Rey climbs into her bunk, and pulls from under her pillow the shirt Ben wore with the hole in it she had made. It smells of salt from the Kef-Bir sea, oil and rust from the death star wreckage, sweat, smoke, and something indefinably _Ben_. Its also filthy with blood, dust and ash, but she refuses to wash it. It's all she has left of him, and his smell has already begun to fade, but she crumples it in her hands and brings it to her chest as she rolls onto her side. 

She wants to stay awake, thinking the dreams will be especially bad tonight, but exhaustion pulls her down to sleep anyway.

_She hasn't dreamed of the Island since she found Ahch-To. She assumed once the mystery of it was over, that it was a real place, she didn't need it anymore._

_It's the same scenery she saw from the cockpit of the Falcon as she and Chewie had approached._

_She hear's Maz's voice..._

_"The belonging you seek is not behind you... **it is ahead!** "_

_She's not sure how she's standing here but it's a dream... so it doesn't have to make sense how she reached the outcrop. This is where they had landed the Falcon, but there's no ship here now._

_Rey follows the same climb she had first time. It's the same satchel, same clothes, she's even carrying her staff which she had broken down to use in the construction of her sabers._

_She thinks about the first time she climbed this path._

_At the saddle, a figure is turned away from her._

_Rey sighs, reaching in to her satchel to pull out the saber she's just buried in the sand, along with Leia's. She already knows he's going to throw it over his shoulder dismissively, but better to follow along with the expected course of events._

_But it's not Luke who turns to her. Or rather it **is** , but not the living man she met on Ahch-To - it is the ghostly form that's guided her more recently._

_Rey almost drops the saber, mouth open as she stares. He doesn't say anything, but points to the west, to the path she knows heads to the Temple._

_Confused, she returns the saber to her satchel, but doesn't move for a moment. Rey is aware she is dreaming, but this feels different too._

_Luke smiles that half smile so familiar to her, and points again._

**_Might as well see where this thing is going,_ ** _Rey thinks, and sets off with a huff._

_Her heart is beating rapidly in her chest, and there's a strange sensation, almost a pressure at the back of her head where her neck meets her skull. Rey isn't sure if this is anticipation, or fear, but every step she makes up the temple stairs feels like a step toward her destiny._

_As she enters the temple, Rey sees another figure with it's back to her, looking down into the mosaic pool of the Prime Jedi. The figure is robed as Luke was, cloak pulled up over it's head._

**_Tall,_ ** _she thinks. Part of her knows who this is, but Rey doesn't want to acknowledge it. This is too much pain for her broken half soul._

_Dreams of the Island used to be her sanctuary against her loneliness, but now her fractured mind has found a new way to torture her._

**_I've finally gone mad._ **

_Slowly, so slowly, he turns to her. It's like time has slowed right down._ _She see's his cheek and the large nose that on any other face would look wrong but is so perfect for his. Even though she knew who it was, when he is finally standing before her it's as though he heart has suddenly stopped._

 _"Ben,"_ _she whispers, dropping to her knees. Rey can't breathe, can't move, can't think._

_Ben rushes to her side, dropping to his knees to greet her._

_"Rey."_

_He reaches out to place a hand on each of her cheeks, that beautiful smile she remembers from Exegol. She can feel the warmth of his fingers, his dark eyes searching hers._

**_This isn't real._ **

_Ben tilts his head towards hers, gently lifting her face towards his with the hands that are still on her cheeks. Warm hands. Like the last time she held them._

**_If this is a dream then I might as well give in to it._ **

_Rey closes her eyes, and as his lips crash against hers she can't help but allow his tongue to explore her mouth. And suddenly, with a sudden rush of air and a swelling in her chest, Rey can **feel** it._

_The sense she always had of him. Even light years apart, even when they were locking each other out, they always had an awareness of each other._

_Rey no longer feels broken. The other half of her soul has been given back to her._

_Rey opens her eyes, and as Ben's lips pull back from hers they are staring at each in wonder._

_"It's not a dream Rey. Not really anyway."_

Rey jolts awake, and brings the ratty black shirt to her face, inhaling the smell of it. She is about to dismiss her dream, but that aching emptiness is no longer there.

She can _feel_ Ben again.

* * *

In the mirror cave on Ahch-To, the Caretakers have gathered. Although not wielders of the Force themselves they are sensitive to it, respond to it, and have been called here. The Caretakers came by boat, through the crack in the cave wall that leads out to sea, and they wait in expectation of what is coming.

There are a dozen small lanterns lying on the rocky shore before the mirror. The frosted surface throws dull reflections of the lantern light, and the silence of the Lanai is suddenly broken by a collective gasp as a change occurs.

It shimmers, becomes clearer, and the figure of a shirtless man in black appears. He holds his body as if he is in immeasurable pain, dirty, sweaty and covered in blood. And it seems he is looking for something, desperately calling out to something or someone, although nothing is heard on this side of the mirror. Finally, the mirror surface clears completely and it is as if a force field holding him back has suddenly been switched off. He falls forward on to the stone before him, unconscious. He's still in those filthy black pants and boots, but there doesn't seem to be a mark on his naked upper body. At first he is so silent the Caretakers at first think he is dead. But then the man takes a deep gasping breath, and groans at the effort as he gets to his feet.

"Where is Rey?"


End file.
